“Big Brother” apologizes as Amazon offers affected customers gift certificates or replacement copies of George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-four” and “Animal Farm”, which were deleted without explanation earlier this summer.

Covered earlier in George Orwell’s 1984 and Other Books Go Down Project Gutenberg’s Memory Hole

Today a friend emailed me about his concerns about the “Fairness Doctrine” affecting American radio and I was about to recommend that he download 1984 and was about to provide the link that I had once used to get the Plucker version that would work in my Tungsten’s reader… but not only wasn’t 1984 there, NONE of Orwell’s titles were available. See screencap below:

George Orwell no longer available at Project Gutenberg

As of 28 January 2009, Australia’s Project Gutenberg still had George Orwell files: http://gutenberg.net.au/plusfifty-n-z.html#orwell

I have copied the files and the links will be here as long as I’m allowed.

• Down and Out in Paris and London (1933)
• Burmese Days (1934)
• A Clergyman’s Daughter (1935)
• Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936)
• Shooting an Elephant (1936)
• The Road to Wigan Pier (1937)
• Homage to Catalonia (1938)
• Coming up for Air (1939)
• Animal Farm (1945)
• Politics and the English Language (1946)
• Nineteen eighty-four (1949)
• Fifty Orwell Essays

I hope that I will be able to update this post with news that Project Gutenberg‘s new omission was a technical glitch and not throwing Orwell down the memory hole [linked to Wikipedia].

More Fairness Doctrine sources:

• The Fairness Doctrine at Work
• Liberals, too, should reject the Fairness Doctrine
• Fairness Doctrine Fouls Out
• Limbaugh Is Right on the Fairness Doctrine – Wall Street Journal
• Fairness Doctrine Watch